a guy on another forum said you could just lay the electric coal on the tobacco, without using foil, so straight on the tobacco, for more heat/smoke.

I thought you would get too much smoke because of the heat, as there's no foil now and the coal touching the tobacco, but he says that doesn't matter, as the foil is only used to keep the ash from falling on the tobacco.
The only negative is that your shisha will stick to the coal, and it gets dirty, but you can clean it ofc.